A recent issue of Wired features James Cameron on the cover, and he wrote an article about deep-sea diving which is fascinating.

He also has a cool NPR.ORG interview that expands on the article. I don't know if it's still available at the website but it's nice to hear him talk about the recent adventures he's been on as well as the bit of info on Battle Angel.

FEATURE - King of the 3-D WorldFilmmaker James Cameron talks about his new IMAX documentary, his 2007 feature Battle Angel and a 3-D revolution that has only just begun. Source: FilmStew.com

Six years ago, James Cameron bounded onto the stage at the Oscars and crowed, ‘I'm king of the world!’ It was the flip side of Sally Field’s previous ‘You like me, you really, really like me.’ In this case, Cameron didn’t care whether we liked him or not. He was claiming the prize as his rightful possession.

Today, the memory of Titanic’s box office records has dimmed somewhat in the shadow of the gargantuan success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings run. Although Cameron’s film is still the number one domestic and international hit of all-time, the Rings trilogy when combined leaves the tale of Jack Dawson in its wake.

So what has Cameron got up his sleeve for the near future, after surprising Hollywood and his fans with the documentaries Expedition: Bismarck, Ghosts of the Abyss and now Aliens of the Deep, a 3-D immersion into deep ocean life that opens in IMAX theaters on January 28th? As the rangy blond auteur told FilmStew during a recent interview, it all has to do with a forward-looking slice of 26th century fiction.

"The prevalent theory [in Hollywood] is you make this big film, you have all this success, but you're afraid of success and don't want to continue," says the 50-year-old Canadian born filmmaker, who makes no apologies for enjoying the recent freedom to pursue personal projects. But, he admits, "Now I have a languishing theatrical film production company and a thriving documentary film company."

The same 3D technology in evidence in Aliens from the Deep permeates Cameron’s current CGI pre-production work on Battle Angel, the story of a 14-year-old female cyborg with a human brain and a completely synthetic body. "She has all the wild emotions of an adolescent in a destroyer body. It's a great metaphor for being a parent," explains Cameron with a laugh.

"It's a very complex story with lots of incredible visuals,” he continues. “The thing that attracts me to it is that every eight-year-old in the world will get exactly what's cool about this film, but there's enough complexity, nuance, symbolism, and all that stuff to keep us old farts interested, keep me interested for a couple of years, as well."

Characters and environments for Battle Angel have been designed, and Cameron expects to begin on-set photography this May or June. He also plans to follow an unusual production model, a start/stop process in which he will complete some photography, follow that with more CG work, followed by more photography, and so on.

It’s a good thing Cameron appears so excited about his return to fiction; the 20th Century Fox project will need to hold his attention through a planned release date of May, 2007. The advantage to this long lead time is that by then, Cameron figures technology will have caught up to him. He fully expects that by then theaters everywhere will be converting to digital projection.

"We're interested in taking some of those digital cinemas and turning them into digital 3-D cinemas,” he reveals. “The uptick to do that in price is not that great once you are investing in the underlying digital cinemas. So we have a way of taking all of the stuff that we're shooting now, feature film projects, fictional stories, and so on and showing them to a much wider audience."

Cameron’s recent interest in science and the ocean is hardly surprising, given a resume that includes, in addition to Titanic and his recent documentaries, the nautical adventure The Abyss and the sci-fi thrillers Aliens, Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In fact, Cameron made his filmmaking debut with 1978’s Xenogenesis, a short about explorers searching space for a place to re-ignite the cycle of creation.

What propels Cameron is a lifelong fascination with the aquatic and with outer space. As a child, he says he loved oceanographer Jacques Cousteau's nature documentaries and pretty much any science-fiction. Growing up near Niagara Falls, he begged his father at age 16 for scuba diving lessons, even though the family lived nowhere near the ocean.

"I learned to scuba dive in a pool," Cameron recalls. "It wasn't until I moved to California that I ever even scuba dived in the ocean. But I just loved it. I loved this idea that there was this alien atmosphere right here on planet earth. I knew that I was never going to be an astronaut and visit another star system or land on another planet, but I knew I could explore an alien world right here."

Aliens of the Deep began as outgrowth of Expedition: Bismarck, when Cameron decided to stay on board the Russian ship that served as Bismarck's base of operations after the film wrapped. The vessel's scientists were on their way to hydrothermal vent sites at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to study the life that somehow thrives in the dark recesses of the deep.

Cameron is the first to admit that for all of his experience diving, most of it has been to shipwrecks. He had never dived in the pursuit of scientific inquiry. That is until a friend on the ship, Dr. Anatoly Sagalevitch, who was in charge of the Russians' manned submersible institute and who played a small role in Titanic, challenged his pal.

"He said, ‘You know, you're always doing these films about ships, but where's the reality? Where's the science?’" remembers Cameron. It was a dare that filmmaker could not resist as he spent another month and a half on the ship with a two-man crew, paying for seeds of the new production out of his own pocket. Diving down in submersibles, small manned submarines, he filmed the geology of the ocean floor and the many surprising animals – blind albino shrimps and crabs, strange octopi, elongated red worms – that live there.

"I fell in love with these amazing, amazing environments,” he enthuses. “It was really the childhood fantasy of getting to go to an alien planet turned real."

“Here it was, just the most incredible geology you could imagine, these sheer cliffs that went up three or four hundred feet, these underwater volcanoes, these incredible animals,” he adds. “I thought, 'I have to make a film about this.'"

Cameron set about putting together a "cast," not just of marine biologists, but also NASA scientists investigating a possible relationship between this odd undersea life and the extraterrestrial life they theorize may exist and that space exploration may someday uncover. Aliens of the Deep is also a family affair, as Cameron is joined by his brothers - Dave, who ran deck operations and maintained the submersible craft, and Mike, a former aerospace engineer who now uses his skills in deep ocean engineering. It was Mike who built and maintained the small robotic vehicles that Cameron used to get cameras into spaces where the larger submersibles could not fit.

Always an innovator, like his buddy to the north George Lucas, Cameron squared off against the current limitations of IMAX’s 3-D technology and developed a lightweight digital 3-D system, dubbed the Reality Camera System, which allows him to shoot for hours at a stretch. "We have to take people along," he says of his aim to replicate the sensory experience of actually being submersed deep in the ocean.

Cameron’s pioneering approach has already won Aliens of the Deep at least one high-profile fan - astronaut Buzz Aldrin. After Cameron screened the film for Aldrin at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the space explorer stood up and exclaimed, ‘It's so great that young people get to see this type of imagery coming from right here on our planet. It’s so mind blowing and can get them excited about the idea of exploration.’

Adds Cameron : "It was very gratifying, but really that was our goal: to get people excited."

Although he's been away from feature filmmaking for the better part of a decade, Cameron admits he has kept a finger on Hollywood's pulse. "I keep looking for something out there that inspires me in the type of filmmaking that I like to do," he says, acknowledging Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy are the movies he has seen most recently that fit that description. "I thought they were just absolutely beautiful, such a major accomplishment, such a magnum opus."

Recently, Cameron dealt with Jackson when the latter briefly contemplated making his King Kong remake using Cameron's system 3-D system. The New Zealand genius’s flirtation with 3-D does not surprise Cameron, as he anticipates it is the direction the medium will soon take.

"I think that the audiences are going to get really excited about what they can go to a cinema and experience, versus right now," he predicts. With Battle Angel, he hopes to fuse story, emotion and visual effects on a grander scale than what he attempted with Titanic. With perhaps a documentary or two thrown in here or there over the next few years for good measure.

"I'll just weave back and forth between the two,” he says. “If I'm blessed enough to be able to continue doing this for a while, I will."

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

True Lies 2 Still Alive! Cameron and the Guv-nah re-team for more Lies.

Variety reports that California Gov-nah Arnold Schwarzenegger is already making plans for his first post-term role in a sequel to the 1994 smash hit True Lies.

James Cameron had originally expressed interest in returning to the project only as producer, but is reportedly now planning to direct True Lies 2 after Arnold finishes his term as Governor. The project will fall under Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment and is being described as "A James Bond type film and not a pre terrorist action film."

Cameron would like to re-team True Lies cast members Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold and Bill Paxton with Schwarzenegger, but no casting has been finalized as of yet.

Schwarzenegger has reportedly expressed interest as well.

FilmForce spoke with Schwarzenegger about True Lies 2 a few years ago, but it's unclear at this point whether this take on the sequel will have a connection to the draft the Governor was referring to. June 27th, 2003: "The script is written, but as you know, after 9/11 happened, Cameron was worried because there's an airplane scene - a terrific airplane scene - that didn't have anything to do with the terrorism that we had in 9/11, but it was a great fight scene inside the plane while the plane goes down and this kind of thing. It was a very important moment in the movie, and he felt like he can't do that and therefore has to rewrite it... These things take a long time."

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

As the clock ticks down toward the December start date of James Cameron's next project, the director is shifting his full attention from "Battle Angel." Although he has publicly identified that film as his next movie, he also is readying a parallel project, tentatively titled "Project 880," according to sources at Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment.

Both films would be shot in 3-D with custom-designed high-definition cameras. Whichever film Cameron does next, he also plans to use a photo-real version of the performance capture technology used by Robert Zemeckis on "The Polar Express."

Seven years after "Titanic" took the all-time global boxoffice crown ($1.8 billion), the 50-year-old writer-director had said that he plans to return to directing with a big-budget studio picture for 20th Century Fox after producing TV and movie projects ("Dark Angel," "Solaris") and experimenting with 3-D Imax documentaries.

Cameron had focused much of his attention on "Battle Angel," based on Yukito Kishiro's 12 popular Japanese graphic novels about a nymphette who morphs into an action heroine. Cameron has reworked a script from "Alexander" screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis that could serve as the beginning of a franchise.

While Lightstorm would not reveal a final title or story line for the new project it is calling "Project 880," Cameron could decide to film that feature before tackling "Battle Angel," which has proved to be a difficult script to adapt.

Cameron also has been developing an underwater adventure, "The Dive," with screenwriter Dana Stevens ("City of Angels"). That project is based on a Sports Illustrated story about freedivers Francisco Ferreras and his wife Audrey Mestre, who expired while trying to break her own depth record. Rights have only recently been disentangled and because that script is not ready, it is not one of the two projects Cameron is readying, Lightstorm said.

Eager to use the latest technology toolbox on his next film, which will be effects intensive, Cameron has had a team of technicians working behind-the-scenes to build customized solutions that will enable the director to bring his visions to the big screen.

Working from scratch, "Titanic" visual effects supervisor Rob Legato is building a prototype virtual cinematography system for previsualization on Cameron's next project. The system that Legato is building will allow Cameron such freedoms as choosing lenses, framing, Steadicam, dolly, pan and tilt, focal lengths and other camera controls during the previsualization stage rather than on location. The frame-by-frame setup will allow Cameron to envision the entire film in a computer before he shoots a single frame of the live-action, performance-capture material. Legato also is helping Lightstorm configure a visual-effects "pipeline" to get a new system up and running within weeks. Cameron is scheduled to screen Legato's test footage Wednesday.Cameron also is expected to start CamNet, a new camera distribution business with his longtime camera technician Vincent Pace, who recently customized a Sony HDCAM SR F-950 unit by detaching the optical block from the camera body and adding a wireless accessory for motion and lens control, thereby allowing remote-control wireless HD lensing via a fiber link from up to 10 miles away. This camera system would allow camera crews to remain above water during deep sea shoots.

With the latest innovations in motion capture, Cameron also will be able to film actors on dry land as they play characters underwater. Just as Tom Hanks was able to body surf an a fast-moving train in Sony Imageworks' "Polar Express," actors will be able to explore the depths of the ocean from the safety of a motion capture stage.

Legato contributed innovative visual effects work to Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," for which he shot second-unit visual effects photography, and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Legato supervised both films at Imageworks, which he left this year to work as an independent with plans to direct. Lightstorm execs are interviewing visual effects supervisors to whom Legato is expected to hand over the previsual system he has developed under heavy security. Brooke Breton, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" effects producer, is said to be a strong candidate.

Intrigued by 3-D technology ever since he made 1996's "T-2 3-D: Battle Across Time," a 12-minute short for the Universal Studios theme parks, Cameron conducted research and development for the new film's technology, while making two 3-D Imax documentaries, 2003's "Ghosts of the Abyss" and this year's "Aliens of the Deep."

Having declared that he "will never shoot on film again," Cameron will deploy the same side-by-side, 3-D high-definition video Sony cameras that he used on "Ghosts of the Abyss" on his upcoming feature, Lightstorm sources said. Cameron also hopes to release his next film in 1,000 theaters equipped with digital projectors.

Cameron, George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez and Robert Zemeckis made strong pitches at March's ShoWest exhibitor convention for exhibitors to install 3-D digital projectors to support their upcoming 3-D projects, including planned 3-D versions of the "Star Wars" films.

Actor-comedian Tom Arnold insists that True Lies 2, the follow-up to James Cameron's 1994 comedy-actioner, is still going to be made. Star Mag and Dark Horizons quote Arnold as saying that he met with Cameron, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Paxton, and Eliza Dushku about the film last month.

"We're doing it," said Arnold. "Definitely doing it. I'm revved. Unlike Terminator (4), which I think they're doing without Arnold, Jim's prepared to wait for the big guy. So am I. I've been waiting for ten years now – I'm sure I can hang on a few more months."

While Arnold's excitement is encouraging, his math skills seem to be lacking. If Cameron is indeed planning to shoot True Lies 2 with Schwarzenegger – as this earlier report suggests, they'll be waiting at least until January of 2007, which is when the Governator's term expires. That's a bit longer away than "a few months".

That's also assuming Schwarzenegger doesn't run for re-election. California governors may be elected to two terms, in which case the Austrian-born actor might not be available until 2011. One factor favoring Schwarzenegger's return to acting, however, might be his current low approval ratings as governor.

So will there be a True Lies 2 in December of 2007? We'll just have to wait and see, for now.

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

James Cameron is moving forward on his next helming project, the sci-fi thriller "Battle Angel" for 20th Century Fox. The film marks the director's long-anticipated follow-up to "Titanic," which Fox co-financed with Paramount Pictures.

Fox declined comment and would not confirm that the project has been greenlighted, but Mali Finn Casting has placed an open casting call online for the lead actress in the new Cameron film.

The ad calls for female applicants age 16 to mid-20s who are athletic and agile with graceful movement and have an ear for languages and dialects. Submissions are due Dec. 19, the firm said.

"Battle Angel" is described as a big-budget adaptation of a 12-part Japanese manga series set in the 26th century that centers on 14-year-old female cyborg named Alita.

Fox's Emma Watts will shepherd the project for the studio, with production scheduled to begin in February.

Cameron has said publicly that he is planning to direct two movies back to back using a virtual-reality production process he refined and developed with visual effects cameraman and second unit director Rob Legato. The process is based on a photo-real version of the performance-capture technology used by Robert Zemeckis in "The Polar Express."

"Battle Angel" is the first project to employ the process and is set to come out in summer 2007. The second -- known in Cameron circles as "Project 880" -- is slated for 2009, the director has said.

Early last month, Fox executives visited a Los Angeles stage set up by Cameron's company, Lightstorm Entertainment, to view his proof-of-concept. They reviewed the director's latest digital-production process that includes 3-D high-definition digital-camera systems in a virtual production studio, allowing Cameron to make camera choices, edit, work with CG objects and direct actors on a stage within a virtual environment.

The frame-by-frame production setup allows Cameron to envision the entire film digitally before he shoots actors in live-action, performance-capture material.

Cameron demonstrated a real-world test of the technique on the stage to show the infinite digital production possibilities the system enables. The director had worked to debug and refine the system since early spring to get it to finished quality before demonstrating it to studio execs.

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

QUINT: I'm a big fan of your feature work, but I have to say that everything I love about your films... the pushing of the technology, your passion for the story and the material I have found in your documentary work as well.

CAMERON: I'm kinda glad you saw that. In GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS we didn't really bring the style that you'd have on a feature 'cause that wasn't our brief. We were trying to make it natural. You know, just whatever happened happened. No second takes, no lighting, nothin'. On ALIENS OF THE DEEP I said, "We're going to make this one a little more cinematic, we're going to contour this a little more. We're not going to make anything up that didn't happen, but we're going to do some lighting, we're going to make it feel a little more movie-like." That was just a conscious decision.

QUINT: Was that to benefit the IMAX 3-D experience...

CAMERON: It was... It was just sorta what we wanted to do because I was working with the same crew and we'd had this experience on GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS that we had been so rigorous about not imposing ourselves creatively on the expedition that we wound up with 1300 hours of footage to make a 60 minute movie. That was crazy. We had 300 hours just of 3-D and the other 1000 hours was all the sub interior multi-cam... they were all standard-def video images, but still... it was just hours and hours and hours of stuff.So, we said, "Alright. We can't do this." Because it just doesn't service because out of all that time you still don't have that person saying that thing you needed to say. So, the way we work now is I say, "Okay... You're the expert, you put it however you want, but you know what we're trying to say here. Put it in some concise way that I can put in the movie..."

QUINT: To try to get some sort of structure...

CAMERON: You just got to structure the moment a little bit more. What I found out is... that's what everybody does. (laughs) I had this idea of what a documentary was and it was wrong. It was surveillance. We were doing surveillance.Now, there's some beauty in it because when things happen... We were out filming the Titanic (for GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS) when September 11th happened and I just walked around with the camera and talked to people afterwards... in 3-D and blew it up to IMAX. There's a moment where a friend of mine, Lewis Abernathy, on the expedition... he just went off. He just started talking. It was beautiful. I wish I could have put it all in the film.You can't make that up. I couldn't have written that down ahead of time. That was just a moment.There's something that's really intoxicating about the documentary process when something does happen, when it does line up in front of the lens and you're like, "That's incredible!"

QUINT: And you were the one to capture it...

CAMERON: Yeah, yeah! Or even if the other guys get it... One of my favorite shots in GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS is when we're getting slammed by the storm and we can't get the sub out of the water and we're just getting trashed. I was in the sub, I wasn't even shooting! I had briefed everybody ahead of time... we had this big plan. What we said was if anything ever goes wrong on the expedition... wrong, wrong, wrong... people dying, blood on the deck... I don't care what it is, you shoot it. I don't care what it is, you shoot it. As long as you're not interfering with emergency operations or if by shooting you're not helping in the situation... But if there's a legitimate case to be made that you're not in the way and they don't need you... shoot it!So, when September 11th happened, we just shot it. It was pretty amazing. Here we are shooting IMAX off the shoulder, which had never been done before. Shooting hours and hours and hours because it was all HD.

QUINT: I remember seeing the behind the scenes on T2:3-D with the old IMAX 3-D cameras you used and just how gargantuan they were...

CAMERON: Yeah, the beam-splitter rig... the size of a refrigerator. I wanted to make a 3-D film, but I didn't want to have to use that gear again. I said, "Why can't we use HD?" They said, "Well, HD won't blow up to IMAX." I said, "Yeah, but maybe two HD pictures overlaid with each other will blow up to something that looks a lot like IMAX." They thought I was nuts.We went to Tokyo, got Sony to work with us... They built these special camera heads for us that we incorporated into our 3-D system. We built the system... you know, it cost millions of dollars to build this camera system, but it works perfectly. It's state of the art. And now the projection is coming along, too. Now you can shoot it and slam it straight into a digital theater. I can do live 3-D. I can do live 3-D that looks exactly like ALIENS OF THE DEEP... Live!

QUINT: I was on the set of SPY KIDS 3-D and Rodriguez had a set-up there where you can see the 3-D live... to the point where he had a display that you could watch in between takes and see the crew setting up the next scene... in 3-D... as it was happening!

CAMERON: That's a version of our cameras, yeah. Did he use goggles or did he use the monitor for the 3-D imaging?

QUINT: I had to wear a pair of polarized glasses to see it...

CAMERON: Yeah, yeah. Well, Robert is actually a 3-D pioneer... Now, hopefully, before he does another 3-D movie or when he does his next 3-D movie he'll do it for digital release and not the anaglyph, 'cause I hate the anaglyph. I think it's a real set-back because it gives people headaches. If you're over 10 years old you can't watch it.

QUINT: Yeah, the polarized on the set was amazing, but the red and blue in the theater...

CAMERON: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. It's gotta be polarized. But the new digital 3-D with polarization, with digital projectors, is phenomenal.

QUINT: I saw the digital 3-D projection with CHICKEN LITTLE.

CAMERON: CHICKEN LITTLE had perfect projection. The movie was retrofitted to 3-D, so I think of it as 2 3/4-D. It wasn't quite... not because they weren't doing good stereo... By the way, I'll call it stereo instead of 3-D because 3-D has been co-opted by the CG world. Stereoscopicy, stereographics, stereo. CHICKEN LITTLE had perfect stereo, but the movie was not conceived as a 3-D film, so it didn't kind of have that "Umph!"

QUINT: At this very moment on this very day... where do you feel pulled the most strongly? To keep advancing technology? To keep exploring? To tell a feature story? Or is it sort of a combination of all that?

CAMERON: I think the time is right, right now, for me to go back to narrative filmmaking, which is what I'm doing. The reason is I've spent the last 5 years, first of all, having some great adventures, really kind of learning the documentary trade and building up a documentary company which can now function on its own to a certain extent, so I'm now allowed to do it.But also I get to take all the tools that we've built over the last 3 years, in terms of digital filmmaking, HD, stereo, fiber optics... all the tools that we've built for ourselves for these documentary shows I now bring to the feature. So, I'm really anxious to take everything I've learned in the stereo world and apply it to a feature and that's what we're doing right now.I can't think of anything that I see on a screen these days without thinking how much better it'd look in 3-D! If I see a movie I really like... Like, I'm watching KING KONG I think, "Man! That'd be great in 3-D!" Everything's better in 3-D! Everything! A scene in the snow with two people talking... in 3-D... It's amazing! You're in the snow! You feel the snow.

QUINT: In CHICKEN LITTLE, the 3-D that I tended to like the most was the simple stuff... like a shot of Chicken Little in the back seat and his dad in the front seat and just really seeing that depth... It wasn't, like, COMIN' AT YA! 3-D...

CAMERON: Yeah! You're in the car. You're in the car with those guys. It shouldn't be about COMIN' AT YA! 3-D, it shouldn't be about getting poked in the eye all the time. That's the abusive 3-D that I think filmmakers had to go through to get to the stage where we are right now where we think of it instead of something coming out at you all the time, it's a window into a reality. You're sharing that reality or you're able to look into that reality.

QUINT: I'm resigned to the fact that you're going to keep a lid on PROJECT 880...

CAMERON: Good. That saves us time.

QUINT: But I'm curious why the secrecy...

CAMERON: Why the secrecy? Um... People tend to dissect movies without seeing them and to me that spoils the magic. Now, having said that, we'll tell everybody what we're doing eventually.

QUINT: Do you have any idea when?

CAMERON: I'm thinking March.

QUINT: Yeah? Very soon, then.

CAMERON: Pretty soon, pretty soon. We've been working on this film for 6 months. (laughs) I'm kinda surprised no one knows what we're doing!

QUINT: Can we go over a couple projects real quick? I'd like to bring up something that doesn't get really get brought up much, a film you were working on with Guillermo Del Toro called COFFIN...

CAMERON: Yeah... Well, COFFIN is not... Look, here's where we are. I've changed the nature of my company. I'm now not developing movies for other directors. I've got 4 films teed up right now that are either in a good treatment or a good shooting draft form for me to do over the next 5 years. I'm teed up. I'm in for longer than 5 years, so I don't need a development staff right now. I just need a little core team, like my documentary team, except on the feature side to just go out and nail these films, one after another. That's going to be the game plan. So, we changed the company and a lot of people left the company as a result. What I've said is there are only a couple of projects that I will continue to be involved with that we did develop and COFFIN is one of them. The reason for that is because Guillermo del Toro is one of my best friends and we've never really worked together. I mean, we always feel like we're working together because he gets all involved in my stuff, I get all involved with his stuff, but not in an official capacity. So, COFFIN is definitely not dead and Guillermo says he still wants to make it. He's just finishing up his Spanish film right now.

QUINT: Yeah, PAN'S LABYRINTH. It looks great, I can't wait to see it.

CAMERON: Yeah, it's a pretty cool film. I've seen it.

QUINT: I remember before Paul W.S. Anderson did ALIEN VS PREDATOR it came out that you kind of made an offer to do another ALIEN film with Ridley Scott...

CAMERON: Yeah. Ridley and I talked about doing another ALIEN film and I said to 20th Century Fox that I would develop a 5th ALIEN film. I started working on a story, I was working with another writer and Fox came back to me and said, "We've got this really good script for ALIEN VS PREDATOR and I got pretty upset. I said, "You do that you're going to kill the validity of the franchise in my mind." Because to me, that was FRANKENSTEIN MEETS WEREWOLF. It was Universal just taking their assets and starting to play them off against each other.

QUINT: Milking it, totally.

CAMERON: Milking it. So, I stopped work. Then I saw ALIEN VS PREDATOR and it was actually pretty good. (laughs) I think of the 5 ALIEN films, I'd rate it 3rd.

QUINT: Ummm...

CAMERON: I actually liked it. I actually liked it a lot.

QUINT: You know, I hate it when movies don't abide by the continuity of their series...

CAMERON: When they make up their own rules.

QUINT: Exactly. They did that a lot with the alien incubation time, where from egg to chestbuster it happened...

CAMERON: In minutes, yeah...

QUINT: That kind of stuff really pissed me off with the movie...

CAMERON: Well, it starts to become a video game. It's like, "Okay, that can be in him and that can show up over here..." It becomes more metaphorical or more comic book. I don't mean comic book in a negative way, I just mean that it's working at a kind of mythic, metaphoric level as opposed to really trying to immerse you in reality.I mean, I felt when I was making ALIENS I think the same thing Ridley was doing with ALIEN, which is... "I'm going to make you think this is real." Even though it is completely ridiculous deep space adventure. We were going to make you feel like it's real. It's a question of does the film take itself seriously or not.

KRAKEN: So you still thinking about doing something with it?

CAMERON: No.

KRAKEN: If we promised you our first babies would you think about doing anything with it?

CAMERON: (laughs) Well, the other thing I've learned is that when you deal with a studio and it's their asset... it's their asset. And I should have learned that lesson with PLANET OF THE APES because I had a great... great idea with PLANET OF THE APES, but it was Fox's asset. Even though I was supposedly developing it we didn't see eye to eye and they sort of picked up their marbles and that was that. They turned out, I think, possibly the most egregious film that they could have on that subject because they miscast the director. It's the only Tim Burton film that I don't like.

QUINT: Yeah and it's just frustrating because you can see stuff in there that's great, like Tim Roth's performance, but the movie just falls flat.

CAMERON: He's stunning!

QUINT: What's your favorite dirty joke?

CAMERON: (laughs)

QUINT: I got one from Clooney so I'm hoping to dig one out of you... And I know you've been around sailors, so I know you have some!

CAMERON: Favorite dirty joke? Aw, man. I don't know if I want to go there. Clooney doesn't have any kids! (laughs) I think I'm gonna pass on that one!

You know I've never really thought about if I like Cameron or not, but after reading that interview, I like the guy. He seems to have a genuine passion for film, and that he can appreciate AvP is neat.

Logged

Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.